


How To Impress Your Girl

by Resistance



Category: Country Music RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resistance/pseuds/Resistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt was: Imagine Person A of your OTP winning Person B a giant teddy bear from a carnival game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Impress Your Girl

You know the stage of the relationship where all you want to do is impress her?   
  
Well that’s where our story begins. You wanted to know the story behind that huge stuffed whatever-it-is on her bus? It’s not my best story, but I’ll tell you anyway since you asked so nicely. The year was 2006 and I won’t discuss how old I was, but needless to say I should have been too old to want to show off in the way I did. But I guess guys never really get too old for that when their girl is involved. She was just starting to become my girl at that time. We were dancing around the idea of it. She was—and still is—beyond beautiful and I looked as much as me as I do now, so you can imagine how that whole dance was working out. She was brand new to our world and still had some of that Oklahoma innocence around her. I was being careful. Other than with the Idol people, opening for me was her first tour and the first time she was fully allowed to be all country. And brother was she! Cutoffs and boots, what’s not to fall for? Have you seen her legs?! But of course it was much more than that.   
  
If I can stay focused, our story takes us to a county fair. I think it was in Indiana, but she swears it was Illinois, and to this day we can’t agree on the exact place or date—you can see how often I tried to impress her like that back then. (Hahaha, I say back then, like I don’t do it anymore.) Anyway, the fair was exactly what you’d picture it to be: fried food and fixed games. It smelled like animals and grease. She wouldn’t eat anything they served and still trying to impress her, I didn’t eat anything either. I was trying to impress this vegan girl and even I knew chomping on some pig intestines wasn’t going to do it. So we spent most of our time walking around the game area. The guys that run those games know the look of a guy that wants to impress a girl, and they target us! It was cruel. He held up some stuffed animal that was damn near bigger than her and challenged me to win it for her—only one dollar to impress my girl. Yeah. Right. But she was looking at me with those eyelashes and her hair falling over one eye—half Pollyanna, half Jessica Rabbit. I had no choice.   
  
So I adjusted my hat and put my dollar down. The guy handed me three baseballs with such a smirk that I did everything I could not to throw them all at him. She smiled at me, though. Kissed my cheek and whispered something about luck, I think. I remember she smelled like raspberries and that my first throw didn’t come anywhere close to the wooden milk bottles. I pushed the perceived snickering from the carnie out of my head and focused. My girl wanted me to win her some cheap stuffed thing and damn it I would get it for her. My second throw knocked one of the bottles off the top. I gave her a triumphant look and she rewarded me with far too much praise for what I’d actually just done. I had one more baseball, and if I could knock down both bottles, she could have her pick of the stuffed things. Did I mention how she smelled like raspberries and looked like Jessica Rabbit? I missed the throw embarrassingly. She smiled at me encouragingly and said it was just fine and she’d pick from the little animals that knocking down one bottle got her. But the carnie stepped in. For just one more dollar I could get her something as special as she is. Of course I told him that he didn’t have anything as special as her. But for just one more dollar, I could get her one of those huge misshapen things rather than a small misshapen thing.  
  
Twenty four dollars later, Carrie was the proud new owner of a stuffed hot pink dog-bear hybrid that someone probably paid a poor Chinese child six cents to put together. It was no less than two feet tall and might have been closer to three feet if it could sit up straight, though it seemed to have some kind of back issue. One eye was higher than the other and glued on tilted, giving it a slightly suspicious look. It wasn’t soft when she tried to hug it, instead it made an awkward crunching sound like it was filled with crumpled newspaper and lawn clippings. But she hugged it anyway and smiled at me. Oh God in heaven, that smile. To this day I don’t know I kept on my feet after that smile was leveled on me. She was honestly genuinely happy that I’d won this creature for her. It wasn’t a polite smile, I’d managed to give her true happiness. I would have spent a million dollars to knock those bottles down to get that smile again. I was the biggest man on the planet in that moment. Superman had nothing on me, I made her smile!  
  
As we walked around the fair, she held that stuffed creature in both arms, facing out so it could ‘see’ the fair, she told me. She walked close to me, her hip brushing mine and after two sideways glances from her, I got the hint that I was allowed to put my arm around her waist. Did I mention how she smelled like raspberries? And looked like Jessica Rabbit? She told me she was going to name the stuffed thing after me and I made some casual ‘if you want to’ remark but inside there was some fist pumping. I don’t know if I should have been so proud of that lumpy dog-bear thing being called Brad, but damn it I was! Even if the real Brad wasn’t going to be in her bed that night, the other misshapen one could be. And she’d think about me. When someone asked her where she got that thing, she’d tell them what a man I was. I felt like I had hunted down a mastodon and dragged it back to her cave. Me big strong man!   
  
After we drove back, I walked her to her bus with my arm around her waist again, just because I already had permission to do that. When we got to the door, I was suddenly sixteen and all too aware that her dad should have been sitting with a shotgun in the living room and flashing the porch light. But then she smiled again and every coherent thought left my brain. She said something about having a wonderful evening and something else about the bear thing, but I wasn’t paying as careful attention as I should have been. But she was smiling again and that’s all I could see. When I realized she had stopped talking, I tried to figure out something halfway intelligent to say. When nothing came to me, I leaned down and kissed her. Let me say that again.  _I kissed her._  
  
Every single cliché that you’ve ever heard about kissing happened in that moment. The world faded away and the birds were chirping and my heart was beating insanely fast. If I could have had one single thought in my entire brain it would probably have been to make fun of myself for being everything that I’ve mocked movies and other guys for being. But I didn’t have a spare thought that wasn’t completely focused on her, so I didn’t do any mocking in that moment. She moved the bear-dog from between us so she could step closer to me. I slid an arm around her waist but kept my hand on her back. I brushed her hair out of her face, touched her cheek, prayed and prayed that that kiss would never end. I think it lasted either six years or six seconds, or possibly both.   
  
From what she’s told me, I wished her good night, and got myself back to my bus after that. But I don’t actually remember a damn thing about it. I remember that kiss. I remember her smell. I remember the way she felt in my arms. I am every sappy love song any of us has ever sung. And what’s worse is that I don’t care that I am. She’s worth it. To this day, she’s still worth it. And I’m still a sappy love song. And I still try to win her misshapen stuffed things when we can find a moment to slip away to fairs and pretend to be someone that no one knows. But that first one, that one has its own chair on her bus, it goes with her everywhere she goes. And when people ask her about it—and they do—she tells them how her man won it for her on their first date, on the night of their first kiss and she tells them how much it means to her and how it’s been with her on every tour since. And if it’s a reporter that’s asking, she casually hides the sign around its neck that has its name written on it: Brad-Bear.


End file.
